


Little Earthly Problems

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Airplane Crashes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8998513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: "Galahad, are you bailing out? Do you have a lifebelt? I can contact the lifeboat stations on our side and Norway, they'll come and find you." There's no reply, just another burst of static and what he suspects is fire from the burning plane. "Galahad, Harry, can you hear me?"
  "Yes," Harry says eventually.  "Yes you're bailing out?"  "Yes, only I don't have a parachute." Merlin's first mission as a handler, long before he was Merlin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on [the opening scene from A Matter of Life and Death](https://youtu.be/u9v5H0IhODg), which I highly recommend you watch if you've never seen the film before. The fic stands alone, you don't need to watch the clip for it to make sense, but you totally should because it's beautiful. A couple of lines lifted directly from the film.
> 
> eta: Merlin was originally called Archie in this, but I've changed it to Hamish now he's got a canon name!

  
_"What do you think the next world's like? I've got my own ideas. I think it starts where this one leaves off, or where this one could leave off if we'd listened to Plato and Aristotle and Jesus, with all our little earthly problems solved but with greater ones worth the solving. I'll know soon enough anyway. I'm signing off now."_

A Matter of Life and Death

* * *

The communications room smells of breakfast, like someone or other is always cooking toast no matter the time of day or night. It's a weird mix of comfortable - like home, like school - and frustrating; Hamish has been constantly hungry since training began weeks ago, but now he's stamped and qualified and being sent in to do some actual real work his stomach is wobbling far too much to eat anything. He keeps his hands clamped around a mug of builders' tea instead, hot enough that his palms look pink and shiny when he finally puts it down on his tidy new desk.

It's quiet. Merlin did say he should expect that, said there's only a handful of agents and they're not all active at the same time, but it's still sort of surprising. Working for a spy organisation in what's more or less the control room feels like it should be manic, people frantically multitasking on three different phones and a radar display at once, or at least have the gravitas of the military with people in uniforms and rows of desks arranged with mathematical precision. Instead it feels more like the library at school in the long stretches of time between exams - no yelling or running about, a vaguely respectable level of attention to the basic rules of behaviour, but very little real work going on. Instead the dozen or so people in the room are spinning lazily in their chairs, chatting in murmurs, dunking digestives in cups of tea. Someone's playing a game of patience with a deck of cards and blatantly cheating on himself, which seems a bit ridiculous. There are plenty of people with open folders of paperwork, a few here and there typing glowing green letters onto their dark computer screens or tapping away at ludicrously old-fashioned typewriters or hovering by the fax machine waiting for someone to fix the paper jam, but nobody's rushing. Nobody's _excited_.

He wonders whether they were at first - whether they felt these same queasy butterflies on their first days. How long it took for all of this to start feeling like just a job, like any other job in any office in the country.

"Morning," says the woman on the next desk - Lorraine, according to her nameplate - as Hamish is awkwardly spinning round on his chair trying to screw it to the right height. He twirls round twice, seeing her amused face in flashes before he gets too embarrassed and stands up again, spinning the chair with his hand until it suits him.

"Morning."

"First day?"

"What gave it away?" he asks as he takes his seat again and slides neatly under the desk, feeling his eyebrow raise against his will and trying to cancel it out with a sheepish sort of grin. "I've done every simulation in the book. Merlin says it's time I made myself useful."

"Well, it's probably a good time for it. Ease yourself in slowly while it's quiet." Lorraine begins ticking off names on her fingers. "Bedivere's in hospital so he's out of action. Percival and Geraint are on desk duty until they're fit for field work again. Lamorak's on his way to Argentina, maybe you'll get to pick his case up when he lands. Kay, Tristan, Bors and Gaheris are on their way back from missions. Clive and Barbara over there are handling Gareth and Gawain. Lancelot's on mission but asleep, I'm stuck here twiddling my thumbs until he's up. And Galahad's due to check in sometime before lunch too. I think that's everyone."

"So we just sit here and wait until we're needed?"

She shrugs, nonchalant, and uncaps the pen she's been fiddling with to start inking in letters on her magazine crossword. "Better to be ready for anything than understaffed. Some days it's like a football riot in here. Just depends on timing."

He remembers that later, trembling in the toilet cubicle trying to pull himself together. _Just depends on timing. Awful, horrible, shit, unfair timing._ But when she says it he just mumbles some vague reply and starts rearranging the pens in his desk tidy, wishing he'd thought to bring a book.

Two cups of tea and a few more introductions and chats later is when it all starts: the beep and crackle of an incoming transmission, and the movement of heads raising and looking around to see who's going to be the one to pick it up.

"Go on," Lorraine tells him, interrupting her conversation with Percival and covering the phone receiver with her hand. "It'll just be Galahad checking in. Everyone else is tied up, anyway."

Everyone except the five who went for early lunch half an hour ago and the guy smoking and reading a car trade magazine.

"Right," Hamish says, swallows the last cooling mouthful of tea, and reaches for his radio mic with a hand that he half-expects to tremble but doesn't. He's been trained just as intensely in his job as the agents have been in their own. Now it's happening, it feels as natural as breathing. "Come in, Galahad. Request your position."

"Ah," says the voice at the other end of the line, sounding politely apologetic among the crackle of static. "Can't confirm, I'm afraid."

Breathe in, hold, out. It's just like a simulation. You need to ask the right questions to get the right answers.

"Are you coming in to land as scheduled? Can you see our signals?"

"God, no, I'm miles off. Somewhere west of Norway, east of Scotland. Nothing above and below but sky and sea. What's your name?"

Galahad's voice sounds tinny and antique, something about the dodgy staticky connection making it sound as though it's travelling through time as well as the miles of space, fading in and out like a robot powering down in a sci-fi film.

"Cannot read you. Request your position."

"I'd like to know as well but the fucking monsters went and shot my plane to bits, you see. Engine burning, instruments all shattered. Crew bailed out over Utsira at 11:17."

"Crew bailed out 11:17," Hamish repeats automatically. _Now_ there's multitasking going on, scribbling neat notes on a yellow pad, flipping through the atlas in his desk drawer to find the location. "Casualties?"

"Only my pride. First bloody mission, can you believe it?"

Hamish is gripping his pen so tightly it's making his hand ache, that horrible sort of warning pain that comes just before you give yourself cramp. He drops the pen, stretches his fingers out, tries to tell himself to relax even though his shoulders are up around his ears. "Mine too."

"I don't suppose it matters. You could be Arthur himself or one of my grandfather's dead beetles, I doubt it'd change the outcome either way."

"Advise you turn back around and land on Utsira if it's closer," Hamish says, because _don't be defeatist_ isn't going to help anything. "I can arrange--"

"No good, landing gear blasted off, cabin on fire. Hot as fucking hell in here, I shall bail out very soon or I'll be roasted like a Christmas turkey. Would you take a message for me?"

"Go ahead."

"To Peter and June Carter, 11 Stanhope Mews, South Kensington." When Galahad goes silent Hamish repeats the address back to him, thinking he's waiting to hear it confirmed, but his heart feels like it does a little flip when the agent speaks again: quiet, sounding for the first time like he's scared. "My grandparents, they raised me after my parents died. Tell them, I don't know. Rewrite it for me if you can. Make it sound funny and charming and sincere and brave, because god knows I don't feel brave at all. Tell my grandfather I've come to adore his ridiculous dead bugs completely against my will. He wore me down at last, he always said he would. And tell my grandmother her drawings are beautiful and she should put them in frames on the walls, all of them. You don't have to write any of this, I know it sounds nonsense. But please let them know I love them very much."

"I've written down every word." He can feel Lorraine looking at him and keeps his eyes turned down to a whorled knot in the polished wood of his desk. "Galahad, are you wounded?"

"A little singed around the edges but no, these bulletproof suits are a marvel. Perhaps you'd enquire with Merlin into the possibility of bulletproof planes," he adds in a sarcastic but wrenching sort of deadpan tone that makes Hamish laugh quietly against the back of his hand even though it's not funny at all, really. "What's your name?"

"Hamish Warrington. Galahad, are--"

"It's Harry."

And that makes everything feel suddenly, awfully _real_ , even more than it already did. "Harry," Hamish repeats in a wobbly, stupid little whisper.

"I always had visions of, you know, me in my suit demolishing some criminal twerp at poker. 'Hart. Harry Hart'. But it doesn't sound right, somehow."

"I think it sounds spectacular." Somewhere over the North Sea, in a burning plane with smashed intruments and no landing gear, Harry laughs the way Hamish did - quiet, humourless, sounding devastated as though Hamish has just told him something appalling. "Galahad, are you bailing out? Do you have a lifebelt? I can contact the lifeboat stations on our side and Norway, they'll come and find you." There's no reply, just another burst of static and what he suspects is fire from the burning plane. "Galahad, Harry, can you hear me?"

"Yes," Harry says eventually.

"Yes you're bailing out?"

"Yes, only I don't have a parachute."

In the silence that follows, Hamish becomes aware that the others have returned from lunch and the room is the oppressive, sickening sort of quiet that comes when people are trying in vain to listen in on someone else's conversation without being too obvious about it. He squeezes his eyes shut, just for the merest moment, and when he opens them he settles his face into the blankest expression he can manage and battles on as if they're not there at all. It's not difficult, really: it almost feels as if there's a tunnel between him and Harry now that's only big enough for them, or like a thread linking them across the sea. The room seems dimmer somehow, as though that's the part that's far away, and Harry is the thing that's vital and solid and present and _alive_ even though he's nothing but a crackly voice in a burning plane.

"Repeat, please?"

"I don't have a parachute," Harry says again. "I mean, I do but it's shot full of holes." The regret in his voice is a strange thing - it sounds as though he's sorrier to have to say it than he is for the fact itself. It seems a very polite, English sort of sorrow. Hamish wants to laugh again, desperate and helpless, but he swallows it back, although it's difficult when Harry adds, "I've always despised really hot summers but I rather like the sea. I'd much sooner die down there than up here. And let's be realistic, I'll probably die of fright before I'm halfway down anyway so I shan't know."

"You don't sound"--Hamish cuts himself short because it's a fucking stupid thing to say, but Harry makes an interested sort of please-go-on noise so he starts over. "You don't sound frightened. You sound like you're apologising for the inconvenience."

"Well, it's certainly fucking inconvenient. I had no intention of dying on my first mission and I feel terrible for ruining yours. I hope it doesn't put you off the job. I think you're going to do marvellously. You sound far more held together than I feel. It's, you know, a nice last voice to hear. I feel very lucky for that, at least. Are you handsome? You sound handsome."

"You sound like you're rambling."

"Well, what if I am? I have so many thoughts left and so little time, I need to hurl them all at you while I work on gathering my courage. Are you?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

"Yes, I'm tremendous. Oh, now you're laughing at me, I can hear it. It's wonderful. Do it again."

"I can't just... people can't laugh on command."

"It's in your voice still, I can feel it. Hiding there, shy. I don't think you're shy, are you? Reserved, perhaps. You like things neat and orderly, you like rules. Were you in the military?"

"My father was."

"There, see? We've spoken for five minutes at the end of my life and I know you better than I know anybody else in that building. God, this fire is blazing like the fucking devil."

Hamish's fingers find the knot on his tie, tugging it an inch lower and flicking his collar button open to ease the dreadful sense of choking in his throat. "We must be able to do something. I'll fetch Merlin."

"No," Harry says immediately. He sounds panicked, although he controls himself at once, breathes quietly for a few moments, then repeats softly, emphatically, "No, please. One way or another this will be over in a minute. If you'll indulge me, I want to be alone with you."

"Yes." The hum of voices in the room is irritating, like the buzz of a fly trapped in the corner of a window beating itself against the glass trying to reach the outdoors. "Anything you want."

"It's very forward of me. I apologise for that. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"You're not."

"I expect there are plenty of people there who would have cut communications once I started, you know--"

F-L-I-R-T-I-N-G, Hamish spells out in Morse code tapped gently against the microphone, not wanting the rest of the room to hear, and over the line he can hear Harry start to laugh, quiet, stunned, delighted.

"Yes, a little. Do you mind?"

"No."

"Good. Are you in love with anyone? Wait, no, I don't want to know."

"I'm not," Hamish tells him anyway. "I'm sure it would be the easiest thing in the world if..."

Lorraine is staring.

Y-O-U W-E-R-E H-E-R-E, he taps to finish the sentence in privacy, and miles away he hears the ragged rush of Harry's breath falling out of him as though he's been punched.

"I love you. Isn't that ridiculous? But you're life and I'm leaving you. I've never felt more in love with anybody. A Scottish stranger who doesn't think he's handsome is the only thing still holding me to this magnificent world. Hamish, it's like a bloody oven in here. I have to go."

And Hamish wants to tell him _no_ and _please_ and _don't_ , but what good would that do? The inevitability of it all is oddly calming somehow, like an unexpected dose of tranquiliser, making his hands feel heavy and his mouth feel numb like the after-effects of a trip to the dentist.

"I'll haunt you," Harry says cheerfully - or fake-cheerfully, wearing it like an imperfectly fitted mask over the rising panic suddenly so clear in his shaking voice. "I'll come and stand over your bed, or hover or whatever it is that ghosts do, and watch you sleep. I'll bring my new friends Beethoven and Boudicca and Elvis Presley. We'll come and cause havoc in department meetings. Perhaps--"

"Galahad," Hamish says gently. "Harry."

"I don't want..." He falters, audibly swallows, seems to struggle for words.

"You're not alone," Hamish tells him, and listens to Harry breathe for a while.

"Tell them I was brave," Harry says eventually. "Tell everyone. Make me a legend."

Hamish tells him to fuck off, and the last lovely sound he hears from his headphones is laughter.

* * *

Losing an agent is only the start of it. There's so much fucking _paperwork_. Everything needs to be logged, duplicated, signed by a neverending parade of people at several different levels. There's an informal enquiry that decides whether a formal one is necessary - in this case the verdict is no, which is a relief, but Merlin had to listen to the full correspondence to reach that conclusion and Hamish has barely been able to look him in the eye for three days.

"Back on the horse," Lorraine tells him when he gets back to his desk in the late afternoon, and she makes a giddy-up motion in front of her body with her clenched hands that makes him want to find out how to request a desk change. He offers a weak smile as his best response and then ignores her, flipping instead to the page of scribbled notes from the other day and starting his fourth attempt at getting them into some kind of reasonable shape to send to Harry's grandparents once the higher-ups have finished concocting their cover story for his death and why there's no body available to return to them.

 _Tell them I was brave_ , he reads, barely recognising the frantic, wobbly scrawl as his own. _Make me a legend_.

"You know," a terribly familiar voice says behind him after a while, "you needn't send that after all."

He looks awfully solid for a ghost, and he wasn't exaggerating about being handsome, although his voluminous fluffy hair could do with a trim. Harry lurks just inside the doorway, leaning casually against the wall. If not for the arm in a sling and several nasty cuts and burns and bruises marring one side of his face, he'd look like something from a pop group's album cover.

"Explain yourself," Hamish demands. Relief somehow manifests as anger, and maybe Harry understands how much is lost in translation because his cocky smile turns softer and he takes a step or two closer to Hamish's chair.

"This is the sort of story that needs a Guinness. Pub?"

"Pub," Hamish agrees vehemently, and gets up to grab his coat.


End file.
